05: Life's a Pitch

00:05 Mo Facts with Adam Curry, August 26, 2019, episode 5. Oh, Mo, you've done it again to me. You brought the music once again. It's Grandmaster Flash, the message. I think I can still do it. Let me see if I can do it. Hold on a second. Let me see. Let me try. Broken glass everywhere. People pissing on the stairs know they just don't care. I can't take the smell, can't take the noise. Got no money, move out. Guess I got no choice. Rats in the front room, roaches in the back. Jokies in the alley with the baseball bat. Try to get away, but I couldn't get far. Cause a man with a tow truck possessed my car. Okay, there we go. This came out when I was a kid.

00:50 I used to know all of it. It's the message. Yeah, it is the message. I think that's appropriate for what we're about to talk about today. If people haven't noticed, all the music is appropriate to the shows. I'm sure we have some very smart listeners. So I think they might have figured it out. Yeah. Right, right. Just for just for the people that, you know, maybe just tuning in, they'll pick that up. One thing I'd like to clear up from the last show is I said Alton Sterling was the guy that was choked out in New York City. I knew we got that one wrong. Yes. It's Eric Garner. Eric Gardner.

01:31 Right. Right, right, right. So I want to apologize for that. Just a little fact check cleanup. Fact check calls. So, all right. Many people hit me in the DMs and they're like, Eric Garner, Eric Garner. Well, hopefully that's not the only thing they took away from episode four, but yeah. Oh, no, no. I just wanted to clear that up right up front. So how's everything else going, though? Everything's good in Opportunity Zone 33 on the frontier of Austin, Texas. How about you? Everything's going great. Got an email from last show concerning last show.

02:13 The clip we played. I forget the gentleman's name. Terrible. It was the immigration hurting black people clip. Ah, yes. Okay, I don't remember either who that was, but I know exactly what you're talking about. So the gentleman from that clip, and I'm going to find his name because it's important, but he will possibly want to do an interview. Oh. One of the listeners made the connection. Nice. I don't want to say the... Wait a minute. Ted Hayes?

02:53 Yes, Ted Hayes, right? It's the gentleman from the clip. I don't want to say the person's name for email because I didn't get the okay, but you know who you are, and I much appreciate that because that's what we want from this channel is to bring good information in so it can be dispersed. And we'll be talking about this at the end of the show, but the idea of how these types of podcasts work, it falls under the value for value system, and we'll talk a bit about at the end, as I said. But in effect, everyone is a listener, but more importantly, everybody becomes a producer.

03:29 And there's many ways you can help. And that's a great example. When someone has knowledge, information, a contact, any other skills that you think would contribute to the show, you're a producer, and you'll be credited as such as well. So that's exactly what producers do is find connections and reach out and try and make the program better. And we love those subject matter experts like the other gentleman wrote in about the opportunity zone. So I'm loving getting all this information because it gives you a better, well-rounded view on the topics that we discuss. Yes, and I'm sure we'll come around to many of the topics that we've already covered.

04:06 Yes. So with that said, what we left off in the last couple of shows were the think tanks. We looked at the left-leaning think tanks. We looked at last show, we looked at the right-leaning think tank, Prager University or Prager U. And I found this interesting clip. It's from a movie, but it kind of describes or details, I think, how a conversation may go between these two schools of thought that's trying to persuade black people to think one way or another. And that's Trick Baby. It's you liberals who have lifted them up, Howard. Oh, you conservatives back in the state.

04:51 You can't afford to strangle hope in people. Without hope, people become dangerous. No, Howard, you liberals have left them in. invade our society. You give them jobs, political jobs. Oh, you missed the point. It's only the smart ones we move up. That makes it even worse. No, no, we have to move them up. If we leave a smart one in the ghetto, he might develop into a leader against us. But if we raise him up into white society, we neutralize him. He feels compelled to try to act like us. He loses his identity and his racial anger, if he has any. He becomes alien to his brothers. They realize he sold him out and they grow to hate him.

05:35 He becomes worthless to them and safe for us. That's no, thank you. In fact, in his love for the creature comforts, except for his color, he's become one of us. Wow. Who was in this movie? And that's the movie Trick Baby from 1974. It was one of the black exploitation films. And the reason why I brought that is I thought that was a great illustration for the two extremes, the left and the right. They're vying for the mind of the black man. I would imagine how this conversation goes. Now, this is not saying the run-in-the-meal average general left or right person.

06:19 These are extremes. So I wanted to bring that to the table to kind of illustrate what I think how that conversation might go to the listeners. You have two schools of thought of how to control or persuade the black community, the quote-unquote black community. So what did you take away from that clip, Adam? Well, what it sounded like to me is, well, first of all, pretty outrageous just to hear that conversation. But both sides wanted to make the subjects, well, it's mind control.

07:00 I mean, either way, it was mind control based on human emotions, but the general concept being if you can show something good and comfortable and nice over here, that's the direction people will go. And there's all these ways you can exploit them on their journey. Right. So that's the kind of thing that I wanted to illustrate. I think that was a nice little bow to put on the previous conversation we were having of the two extremes of the think tanks. Of the think tanks in a nice little one-minute clip. And that, of course, is not abnormal for the think tanks. In this case, it's about getting black people, nudging them where they want them to go.

07:40 This happens, of course, for all groups and races and religions, etc. And I'm glad you brought up that word nudging because we're right back where we left off. So we brought this term up nudging in a previous show, but we really didn't lay out what it was, I mean, in detail and how it works. And I saw one of the greatest nudges of all time with the Popeyes versus Chick-fil-A conversation. Who has the best sandwich? The reason why I say that is one

08:18 for people of my community, it's certain conversations that we don't have in mixed company. So for this to take place on social media so openly, it made me wonder what is happening here. And just to give a testament of how taboo is to have this conversation in public, for one, I feel uncomfortable right now having this conversation. Really? Okay. And I'm not even sure what the conversation is yet, Mo. The conversation is who has the better fried chicken sandwich? Wait a minute. This hasn't creeped over into your feed?

09:03 Nope. Nope. I know about the fast food wars, that there's a lot going on on Twitter, and I have followed that a bit, but never in this context. And I certainly didn't know that it is a social taboo amongst black Americans to discuss who has the better chicken sandwich. No, just know, to discuss fried chicken and it's certain things that are stereotypical of us. And this is for every community. Of course. That you don't discuss that stereotypical topic in mixed company. It's not about who has the best or that. That's not the point. It's just about the whole fried chicken thing, and that sets people off.

09:45 It's a trigger. I get it, of course. And to illustrate that, fried chicken in public. You know, when black people eat chicken for a long time, we didn't eat it because. it because of the racial stereotypes about us eating chicken. Do you think that because of what you do and you know, even what I do with the comedy and stuff, that we have made it look different and made it acceptable? Yeah, I do. I mean, like I said, it's your approach to it, you know, like you approach it from an authentic, organic, genuine, you know, I know you do that with your comedy. You're putting good energy out. You're just kind of, you know, showing something that's pretty obvious, but you know, it is what it is.

10:31 Oh, Mo. Don't tell me you're actually going to take us back to the roots of this. No, I'm not going to go there. Okay. I'm not going to go because that will be the general conversation that's expected. Got it. It's amazing that you haven't heard this topic. I am simply amazed because social media. Well, no, maybe. Well, hold on. Hold on. Let me just step back for a second because maybe I was a little confused. I've seen competing ads for chicken sandwiches from the fast food. And if I saw that on television or read an article about it, but it's on the radar, but way off because it just haven't been thinking about it for me.

11:15 That's not what I'm talking about here. No. Social media was a blaze. Oh boy. A blaze. Like the conversation of who has the best chicken sandwich. Popeyes versus Chick-fil-A. And the reason why I bring this up is this is the perfect example of several things that's discussed on this show and even on the No Agenda show. One, the native ad. Two, nudging. And three, how

11:54 these social media conversations happen in silos. That's why I say I'm amazed that you didn't see this trending on your timeline. And we both agree that you have a gray sandwich. Yes, I do have a gray timeline. That's right. That is amazing that I am flabbergasted that you haven't heard it. But Mo, I don't know if I'm supposed to feel bad or not, but it's my filters are on for other stuff. So I've just been looking at other things. And by the way, I don't like chicken sandwiches. I don't think you understand, Adam, how big this was. It made local news.

12:35 Oh, my goodness. I need to hand in my credentials. Popeyes versus Chick-fil-A. The chicken sandwich war wages on tonight, and the uplight team is putting the Popeyes chicken sandwich to the test. We'll get to that in just a moment. But if you've missed out on what everyone's talking about, let's kind of catch you up. This is the new Popeyes chicken sandwich that's got so many folks talking. It started the debate. The chain put it out last week nationwide, and many people were comparing it to the Atlanta-born Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich. That was all well and good until Chick-fil-A responded with this tweet saying, All love for the original. Popeyes, of course, respond saying, Are y'all good? And then we see Wendy's jump into the phrase saying, These two fools are competing for second best sandwich.

13:18 Of course, Popeyes responding again, saying you must have ate one of our biscuits because you're looking thirsty. And Wendy saying that means your food is as dry as your jokes. This is going on with so many other companies getting in on it. A 2013 study from Cornell University found 59% of chain restaurants and 79% of independent restaurants use social media. And that study was from six years ago. So we're seeing much more. We're also seeing the chains getting sassy online. So this likely won't be the last time we see some sort of war on social media. Yeah. Okay. Yes. I read about this, but I read it in an advertising industry magazine. And so, and it was more a little broader context about the advertisers using social media and the pitfalls and the upside, et cetera.

14:02 So I have more background information than of the actual incredible extravaganza of outrage over which sandwich is the best. And this is my point. For this conversation to happen in the black community on social media shows you the power of the native ad and of social media. I can't say another word. Mind control. And is anonymity a part of this? No, we have people putting their faith. I can tell, knowing you, that you are really blown away by this happening. And that's fascinating because of course I missed this.

14:46 How the hell would I know that this is not something you talk about? about in mixed company? Yet on social media, it's blowing up. I am irked. I am amazed. For lack of a better word, I'm flabbergasted that the topic of the conversation being had, it grew to a certain level, as we discussed before. It's just a little background. It starts trending on social media.

15:23 Then the local news picks up. Picks it up. Yep. So for the fact for this local, this is a local news station, I believe, in Atlanta, I want to say. Well, maybe that's why it's news, even though they didn't really say that. The other thing is, and I didn't clip this part of the clip. They have a taste test with three black people. Taking it to the extreme. Wait a minute. They say only three black people to test the chicken sandwiches. Yes, and then they had a fourth guy who was a white guy. He wasn't on camera. And they called Donald Trump racist.

16:03 This is great. But did you hear the language of the clip? I'm taking it back. I was just amazed. I had people, you're saying friends DM me like, do you see this? Do you see this conversation going on? I mean, more of the, what you want to call, you know, the, you know, the woke crowd. I hate that word. No, we know exactly what you mean. That's good. Do you see the conversation that's going on on social media right now? And I was so pissed for the simple fact there's certain things, and I'm sure this was every culture, that you don't have this conversation in mixed company.

16:43 Do you mind if we explore that for a second? Go ahead. You were pissed. What was your actual feeling? I mean, you were pissed because it was happening, because it felt like a taboo was broken and why here? Why not? What were you feeling? What was your personal feeling about it? My personal feeling is this. There are certain cultural code. And let's be clear. I don't even feel comfortable having this conversation here now. Yeah, okay. That explains so much right there. I got you. Because you're comfortable with pretty much everything. Right. But there, because what it does, it feeds the stereotype.

17:27 And the clip we played before is people were black people weren't even comfortable eating chicken in public. Right. That was Mike Epps from the show. That's his television show. That's racist. So for this conversation to explode on social media. And when you go back and listen to the, these are the public accounts for Popeyes, Chick-fil-A, and Wendy's talking about you mad. You see these fools. It's like, who is typing this for these companies? That's what I always think. It's like, wow, man, whose job is that to talk like this? And do they have some kind of approval chain of command? I always wonder about that.

18:12 Right. So not to belabor the point, but the reason why I'm bringing this up is if you can have people have a taboo conversation or what is perceived as a taboo conversation, that shows you the level of expertise they have in this advertising and manipulation through social media. But to go forward, we have to go back and we have to look at someone like Edward Bernays. Ah, the father of propaganda. Yes. He's the father of propaganda. Tom Kellner, let's see a little background on him. Mr. Tom Kellner is the

18:58 author of Public Relations and Digital in a Digital Age. He's from the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. And in this clip, he speaks on Edward Bernays. It's funny because a lot of the cases in public relations that really illustrate some of the key principles are ones that the field gets criticized for. Edward Bernays is a great example. I've got the classic case in there on the torches of freedom, where he basically used techniques of social psychology, of persuasion, and developed new techniques to persuade women to smoke.

19:43 And on face value, you know, obviously. obviously that's wrong. You know, why would we want anyone to smoke, let alone women in the 1920s? However, if you go down a layer, it's really interesting because it opens up: well, first of all, what are the practices that are at work there? And even if you think about the most evil propaganda in the world, we need to be able to understand those processes so that we can identify them. That's an important societal function. That's important and critical thinking. Yeah, this is good. This is the foundation of advertising. It's very important for people to understand this history. And the reason why I use this clip is he brought up the torches of freedom. Have you heard of that, Adam?

20:25 I've heard, I've heard it. Yes, I could not tell you what it means. Okay, so background on the torches of freedom. And you're going to see some parallels here. In the 1920s, it was taboo for women to smoke, especially in public. Oh, yes. I remember. Is this the parade? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So now we see we're talking taboos here. Edward Bernays took women, gave them cigarettes, specifically Lucky Strikes, that's who we work for,

21:03 and gave them to a group of feminists in a parade and showed them marching down the street, smoking the cigarettes in the parade. Was this the suffragette movement was co-opted for this? I think I think, wasn't that more prohibition or no? No, no, the right for women to vote. No, I'm saying what I thought they were more involved in the prohibition, but I may be maybe off. Sorry, keep going. I'll do a quick lookup. So, the point to show you is with public relations, as they call it, a better term for that is propaganda.

21:44 And they use the term propaganda, they stopped using the term propaganda because of the loaded weight that that word had and switched it over to public relations. So, one thing I want people to take away from is anytime you see the word public relations, substitute that for propaganda. That's right, because that's the proper term for it. But Edward Bernays, he's a genius. I think he was Sigmund Freud's nephew. Yep, correct. So, he understood psychology very well. And he wrote many books, and he was the industry creator of public relations. I would say without being a stretch.

22:29 He's also the person that said bacon and eggs were a great American breakfast, healthy breakfast, because he got doctors to convince. So, this is how it happened: pork farmers had a high quantity of low-quality meat called bacon that they needed to sell. So, he convinced doctors to come out and say a great hearty American breakfast is bacon and eggs. And that allowed him to sell this meat that was really unwanted. And now, look at the money. That's the American way, Mo. That is the American way.

23:09 I'm just that's great. Right or wrong, right or wrong. And this leads us in the second clip of what is okay and what is not okay. But the other important part is: let's hash out the ethical part. Does that mean that organizations should never try to persuade somebody to buy a product? And again, I think it's we can say, yes, it's bad to promote cigarettes. But I think we need to say, well, wait a minute, why? You know, what was Bernays actually doing wrong if that had been a socially responsible product or something that really helped society? And he did do a lot of that too. You know, how can we separate out what makes one case unethical from

23:51 what makes another case ethical? Yeah, it's a good question. So, this is we're going to start seeing a theme here moving forward of ethics. Is it ethical for people to be nudged? So, we have Mr. Richard Thaler, and Mr. Richard Thaler is from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. He's a professor there, and he wrote a book, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. And in the next clip, we're going to have Mr. Thaler do an overview of what a nudge is.

24:33 Nudge is any small feature in the environment that attracts our attention and influences. influences the behavior that we make. Nudging is done by what we call a choice architect, which is a fancy term for anyone who influences the choices that you make. Take the example of the cafeteria downstairs. Somebody had to decide where to put the salad bar, where to put the burgers, where to put the ice cream, where to put the coffee. That person is a choice architect because the arrangement of the food influences the choices that we make.

25:14 Absolutely. Supermarkets, everything. Right. We see this with NCAPs, the I-level products compared to the ones on the bottom. So we see this in stores in a physical environment. But then we have to ask ourselves: what about in the cyber environment, correct? Who are the choice architects for what we see? The banners, what's in our feeds, what they determine to be most important on the rankings. We see this all the time. So I'm laying out a thing here: now we see how propaganda works. They can take things that are taboo and make them more than acceptable, even though they may not be healthy or ethical.

25:59 And we got to ask ourselves: who are these choice architects? And how do we hold them responsible for their actions? So let's listen to the clip number two. Yeah, some people worry that the idea of choice architects and nudging is somehow leading to Big Brother. And that's not the way we think about it. One of the points we stress in the book is that there has to be some choice architecture. So the person who designs that cafeteria downstairs has to put the food somewhere.

26:35 The salad has to be in front of the burgers or behind the burgers. Given that you have to arrange the food in some order, we argue, why not have the choice architect arrange the food in such a way that people will be happier and healthier and maybe live a little while? Yes. Well, the only way to do that is to test and see what works better and then implement the results. So this is my thesis on going back on the Popeyes versus Chick-fil-A debate. I think these social media companies understand ads don't work anymore.

27:21 Would you agree? Will you agree with that? Not only would I agree, I think Jack Dorsey is a very smart guy and he's probably figured this out. Correct. So with that understanding, could you explain to us, and you're saying for the listeners, how do social media companies make their money? Because you don't pay to be on there. So how exactly do they make their money? Well, they have a lot of different revenue streams. Initially, just display advertising was thought to work well. And so just when you see an ad for something, Instagram is probably even a better example where you see it pop up.

27:59 That's very clear. Twitter is much less clear as how it works. But the big part of the revenue is how can we exploit these people based upon the data that they are leaving behind with their behavioral footprint. So would you say creating an argument about a product versus one product A versus product B would kill two birds with one stone? Oh, I think it kills a couple of birds. First of all, if I'm Twitter and I know what my audience really likes better, I'm going to talk to those guys and I'll probably talk to the other guys and give them the same information.

28:41 Say, you should be stepping up your game here because it looks like these guys are beating the pants off you. And what it seemed like to me was Popeyes was trolling Chick-fil-A. I mean, Chick-fil-A is number one in fast food, period. This is exactly that article that I was reading was, and they didn't even answer it conclusively. Is this the strategy was the question? Is the strategy of one over the other to call one out to bring more attention to them? I'll see if I can put it in some show notes. It's a fascinating article. So yeah, absolutely. This was strategy. So let me give you a little background from how I've seen this work in the music industry.

29:24 It's a thing in rap called beef. And what beef does is you have one, the lesser MC or rapper. Calling the other out. calls out the bigger rapper. Yep. And they keep doing it. You see it in boxing as well. But for this example, we see, and let's just take a rap for instance. To be the lesser of the two and garner, you have to latch yourself on with the top rapper. And you do that by what they call beef. And the perfect example of this, you know what I'm saying, was a guy named 50 Cents. Maybe you heard of him.

30:06 Yeah. When he was first coming up, there was a guy named Ja Rule, which a lot of people may not have heard of. He was the top Fire Festival. Right. That guy. That guy. Well, before that, he was one of the top rappers in the rap industry. And what 50 Cent did was create a song about Ja Rule that was so potent, it demanded a response from Ja Rule. Right, exactly. And what that did was put 50 Cents, the lesser rapper, on the level of Ja Rule, the number one selling, you know, saying, uh, hit-making rapper at the time.

30:48 It's a well-known tactic in marketplaces. Right. So I just go to show, you know, saying, uh, in the lamest terms, how this works. So I think what happens is, with the help of Twitter, Popeyes, the lower of the two companies, has a new product. Yep. And they came at the benchmark product. And for people to, it's a reflex thing. That's like saying, you know, you know, Fords are better than Chevy. You're going to get a 50% response pushing back against that, which creates the momentum that you need.

31:28 If I'm Chevrolet, you know what I'm saying? I'll have my company say the new Chevy truck kicks on 50's ass, right? Well, and this brings up an interesting point. In certainly television advertising, we used to see a lot more of product A versus product B, and there are very tight rules. If you say anything that is not 100% true or which is subjective, but you're presenting as facts, you can get in a lot of trouble as an advertiser. Social media, and I'm going to use the yet word in this case, does not yet have these restrictions because we're talking about the, and it's an added bonus is that once you start the beef, so to speak, you can kind of step back and your fans step in and take over, and they can

32:19 be completely subjective, objective, lie, whatever. It's like, well, yeah, you know, your chicken tastes like poop. You can't say that on television, but when you have enough people, and I think this is where you're going when the algos kick in, you can really make a difference and probably change people's minds or at least bring something to their attention they had not thought of previously. So there's a conversation out there saying, well, why did they just get the influencers to promote the sandwich? I think now. It's too expensive. It's too expensive. Not only that, I think now, and I'm having a conversation with another good friend of mine, very smart guy named MG.

33:06 I think the kids, my daughter's age, she's 15 going on 16. They look at influencers now the same way my generation looked at commercials, not to be trusted. Excellent point. We've crossed the Rubicon. We've jumped the shark with the influencers. Right. So once that happens, that makes them invalid or ineffective. So now you can't use an influence. You can't give the top influencers, say, hey, promote my product X and make it boom. But because the kids are like, you're getting a check for that flat tummy T or whatever it is, you're peddling. So that's why it doesn't work. So as you laid out,

33:52 the company can't say my thing is better than their thing because of libel reasons and legal reasons, correct? Yep. Oh, absolutely. And specific, it's probably FTC regulations. I mean, there's a lot of stuff you just can't do. And I don't think these rules have adopted, although there was one change made that you have to disclose if you're being paid for something as an influencer. But that disclosure is almost like the fine print that you see underneath the financing for your car TV ad. So it's minimal, but. you do have to disclose that now. But that's about, that's all that's really changed.

34:34 And may you blow my mind because I hadn't really considered this particular example, but that is a very interesting business model they're employing there. So this is how I think, going back to my theory, if I'm Popeyes, I have my people scrolling through, searching through for who has the funniest video about our product. You know, it's a useful idiot. Of course. And then I go and say, hey, Twitter, push the button on this guy. Make him trend. Yep. It's authentic because this guy's a useful idiot. He doesn't know he's, you know, saying he's in on the work.

35:18 Even better, narcissism kicks in, and you're flying high when you start to get a lot of traction on social media as just a guy with a video. And as we've seen with social media culture, once one person goes viral, it's like a literally like a virus. Everybody after that goes by the product, makes a video about it so they can possibly go viral too. Bernays is rolling over in his grave right now. Are you picking up what I'm putting down here? Okay. I saw this. When I saw it, I didn't know what I was really seeing.

36:04 So I started half the dig. But like I said, when I get this itch on something, and as you know, the show was going to go somewhere else. We had talked about before, just on topic-wise. But this thing came and just knocked the other thing. It didn't knock it out, but it puts it in perspective when we're going to get there. But let's go to native advertising definition. So what is a native ad? What makes an ad native? Again, native advertising is a form of paid media where the ad experience follows the form and function of the user experience in which it is placed. In other words, if you are on a blog, then the advertisements will look like some of the other blog content.

36:47 Now it'll say sponsored, right? Or if you're in Facebook, you know, how many of you guys are in Facebook and now you see these in-feed ads, right? You see the sponsored posts. The great CTR decline, the great click-through rate decline. Click-through rates have been on a dramatic downtrend really since the very first banner ad impression was recorded. The very first time there was a banner ad on a website, people clicked on it. The next day, less people clicked on it. When, I mean, it's that, that's just that, that's how it always goes. And then it goes on a steady decline. Advertisers and media companies have to innovate and figure out new ways to get people's attention. Because again, banner blindness is a very real thing.

37:33 Yeah, banner blindness. Have you heard that term before? Yes, because I was a part of the industry that created it and oversaw its steady decline. There's one other economic reason this happens why this type of advertising typically, the way it's always been thought of is you have 24 hours in a day and you can have X amount of advertisements per slot or per pod, as they call it. And you can have X amount of pods per hour and it's a very delicate balance between what people will accept and sit through or will they switch away.

38:13 But the thing is, it's time-based. So the Super Bowl can only have is probably 30 minutes of commercials over the course of the whole game. It's probably more. I'm just picking a number. 30 minutes of commercials, a number of full-minute commercials, 30-second commercials, some that are a story. So we'll have four in a row. But if you want to get in there, now you're in an actual supply and demand marketplace. With the internet, how many minutes do you want? It's infinite. So it's very hard to create an artificial scarcity of your advertising inventory when you have unlimited inventory. So it demands, this is what I found out after running a podcast network.

38:54 And I always say you cannot monetize the network. We had a very simple version of a Bernays strategy, although much more transparent. And that is how we initially made money. But the basic inventory model was flawed from the outset. And it demands something else to happen if these companies are going to stay in business. So I want to bring up something here. So we spoke about blindness. My generation. generation had a blindness to television commercials, correct? And then the first generation of internet users developed banner blindness.

39:37 I think what's happening now is the generation after the millennial has influenced her blindness. Yep. I would say that's probably correct. And that's why we're going back to Popeyes versus Chick-fil-A. We need the useful idiot. You know, of which Twitter is built on. Right. Right. Somebody's going to say something funny about anything on Twitter if you just do enough searching. And that's a retweet right there.

40:16 So what happened is if I have a product, I push it out to the masses, you know, find a useful idiot, put the Twitter machine behind it. Half the people are going to think it's funny. They're going to share. Other half the people are going to think, man, I'm funnier than that guy. I go buy the product and then I make my own video. And then this is self-feeding machine. This is very interesting. I'm sorry, go ahead. And then the opposition is going to push back with equal force or more force, fueling the fire. And this is what we saw. I saw this thing pick up.

40:56 And you know, just for a complete clarity, two weeks ago, I saw my daughter come in with a Popeyes bag. She doesn't eat Popeyes chicken. And, you know, and honestly, I'm like, oh, you kids had this two weeks ago. Right. It was trending on her conversation. You're saying the teenager conversate, trivial conversation. It picked up enough steam. And then it now has made it all the way to late night news. So that just goes to show you how this machine works. But let's go into the second clip for native advertising.

41:38 So that, so either you want to stick out like a so-thumb, or you want to blend in, but you don't want to blend in to where you just look like another boring banner ad. You want to blend in and look like content. And native advertising is the ultimate reflection of that because you're not just blending in looking like content, you're blending in becoming content. Okay. And like I said, nobody wants this. Nobody wants to turn Pinterest into this. And this is what you have to do. If you really want to get click-through rates back up, you got to surround the content with ugly, obnoxious ads. Nobody wants that. So we talked about this morning native advertising is the thing that is coming on board that is going to change this and make it a lot easier. Gave these stats this morning, but it's really good to reiterate.

42:22 Consumers look at native ads 52% more than traditional banner ads. 52% more than traditional banner ads. These were eye-tracking studies that were done. That's impressive. But what's more impressive is that consumers look at native ads more than editorial content. The native advertisements on these websites that have started running native advertisements get looked at more than the actual editorial content. And the reason is that it's marketers producing the headlines. I'd like to add here that the New York Times opened a native advertising division several years ago.

43:04 I'm going to think at least five years ago. And it is a thriving business. And I'm not, I don't know if it may even be so that their advertorial, as we'll call it, or their native ads are consumed more than their traditional news. They disclaim it, but it's so small. Again, it's the fine print, just keeping within the realms of what's legal. And one other thing to the equation is whereas banner ads would deliver a report that said, well, this banner ad loaded on this computer screen. It could have been below the fold, below the screen, so you didn't see it. It might have been obfuscated by something else, but that's the best metric we have.

43:45 It's very poor information. And these are established terms. Engagement is a big term for advertising measurement for statistical analysis of how your campaign is doing. And Twitter will deliver back to Popeyes. Here's how many people retweeted. Here's how many people sent it, added a friend in their retweet, tagged somebody. Here's people who made a video. Here's people who wrote a joke. Here's other people who are trending. It is a beautiful setup for this type of campaign. Yeah, so this leads me to ask the question: Where did Nudging come from? The term

44:31 we saw, we saw that a government agency was set up for this. We spoke about it before. I think it was the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, if I'm not mistaken. Yep, the Nudge Division, the Nudge Division. But that was broken up. So we saw this in politics. I think even before we saw it rolled out into the public realm or into the private industry realm. And that's where I'm headed with this idea. We saw this. Barack Obama was called the first internet president, I want to say, or social media president.

45:11 Is that a fair assessment? That was the setup to hit just in the last part before the election. What I remember is the extreme disappointment with the relaunch of WhiteHouse.gov. Everybody went, is this the internet president? Where's my White House blog? You know, we were thinking this was going to be complete democracy was going to change. But I would say he was the first one to really have social media accounts, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yep. So at POTUS, that account was created for Barack Obama. Right. I think the guys behind his team understood this mentality of

45:55 tying himself to brands. Now we're about to come full circle here. But the brands they had to have were not new brands. It was nostalgia. It was people like Mahatma Gandhi, MLK, Caesar Savez, and anybody that you could link to whatever agenda you were trying to push. Caesar Chavez would be for immigration. MLK, Magat McGandhi would be for social justice issues. It right down to his hope and change. It was all part of the same thing. Right. And even in the clip, that's why I put the clip from Trick Baby. If you listen to what he said, you said you can't choke hope into people.

46:42 Good one, Mo. Right. So we're seeing these people understand we put this guy, and it's not exclusive to the black community. This is all people. It's all about what tools we need to nudge who we need to nudge. So one of my favorite shows is Mad Men. I don't know if you've seen it or not. It's a show about advertising in the 1960s and 70s. If you, if the listeners haven't heard this show, and if you haven't seen this show, Adam, excellent show, great writing, and it shows you the behind the curtains of advertising. It's a classic. It is indeed that good. In this clip, this is Donald Draper speaking on nostalgia.

47:27 Hey. And Teddy told me the most important idea in advertising is new. It creates an itch. You simply put your product in there as a kind of calamine lotion. But he also talked about a deeper bond with the product. Nostalgia. It's delicate. But potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, nostalgia literally means the pain from an old wound.

48:15 It's a twinge in your heart. Far more powerful than memory alone. Nice one. So nostalgia, and the key point I want to take away from that clip is it's more powerful than memory alone. So it's not about how you remember something, it's about how you felt about that. That leads me into Barack Obama using these images of people of the past, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, and Cesar Chavez. Let's listen to Barack Obama, deeply influenced by Mahatma Gandhi. Obama himself is deeply influenced by both Martin Luther King and Gandhi.

48:59 And when in India, he will be paying homage to the father of the nation at Rajkhart. I might not be standing before you today as president of the United States had it not been for Gandhi and the message he shared and inspired. inspired with America and the world. It was this admiration that saw a special moment during Prime Minister Modi's U.S. visit, as Obama personally escorted Modi to the Martin Luther King Memorial. And now the Indian Prime Minister could reciprocate when the president pays homage at Rajkhat. So, what we see here is Barack Obama, and we're not picking on Obama. What we're doing is to show a public figure aligning himself with another public figure that supposedly had a

49:51 message or a perception about him about being peaceful, non-violent, resistance, social justice issue. So, what I'm going here show is if you go and post a tweet with Mahatma Gandhi on your tweet, it's going to be perceived a certain way, correct or not? Yes. So, what Obama did was align himself to these images the same way and it creates a certain image about yourself, the same way Popeyes did with aligning themselves, you know, with images, you know, with the propaganda of public relations they were trying to push.

50:34 Let's listen to Barack Obama too. In 2009, when questioned by students, President Obama had said that his ideal dinner guest would have been Mahatma Gandhi, a person from whom he is hugely inspired. Even during his India visit, Obama spoke of the influence of Gandhi on his life. So, when the American president comes to India, he has made sure that his itinerary includes paying homage here at the Rajghat. Yeah, great campaign. Right. So, he aligned himself, and Barack Obama is a very, very intelligent, knowledgeable person. He aligned himself with Mahatma Gandhi, which, you know, saying, in parallel, aligns yourself with Martin Luther King Jr.

51:17 But there's one problem, and this goes back to Donald Draper's point: it's not about your memory, it's about the feel, that twinge in your heart that these images and these figures, iconic figures, bring up. But let's go and look at was Mahatma Gandhi a racist. Even after his death, he continues to inspire civil rights movements across the world. But it was Gandhi's early writings in South Africa that have cast a shadow on his legacy. During a speech in Mumbai in 1896, he spoke of the savage half-heathen natives who spend their lives in indolence and nakedness. He used the derogatory slur for blacks in South Africa, Kaffir, liberally in his writings.

52:00 Some accuse Gandhi of believing in the superiority of the Aryan race, thinking that blacks were inferior to whites and Indians. In fact, one of the first legal battles Gandhi fought for in South Africa was to demand a separate entrance for Indians and post offices so they were not cast with blacks. So why do many see Gandhi as an icon of justice? Critics of Gandhi say that his writings from his stay in South Africa contrast with what he wrote in his autobiography later on in life. He effectively tidied up some of his earlier views. But others counter this portrayal of Gandhi. They say that his prejudice was born out of a colonial context and reinforced by the fact that at this stage he had had little contact with Africans.

52:41 And after serving as a volunteer to injured Zulus during the poor war in South Africa, he realized the brutality of whites against blacks and some of his views changed. So hopefully we see what's happening here. It's not about what is true or not. It's all about the image Gandhi. It's about image Gandhi. And then as a political figure, you align yourself with that image. The image and nostalgia override what is factually true. Once you align yourself to that, you get the machine going behind what the narrative is.

53:21 And there you have it. Yeah. And, you know, I was going to say as an aside, Twitter is such a great example of this. But this is also kind of what you're seeing with the so-called television news networks. They know one thing: that the money that these candidates raise is coming to them. They don't know exactly how it's going to be divvied up. And they don't know because there is a spread over digital now. They are already acting like a beef network continuously, I might add, to attract the people they want who will supplement that with

54:01 the television equivalent of display of banners, you know, commercials. But who knows what else? I'm sure they have all. all kinds of cool native advertising deals that you can uh set up with them and craft and create. And uh, under the guise of, hey, it's uh, it's a it's an official word here. This is a news network, which we all know it's not. And the point I wanted to highlight in this is it's not that Obama didn't know about Gandhi's past he had he had to know. This is this is not like uh stuff that was just no secret, no, right?

54:39 This is no secret, even um, uh, president of South Africa Nelson Mandela knew about this and when he when he was alive, and you know, he kind of said we got to look past it. He was a victim, I mean, uh, product of his times. That was it, that was his excuse is like kind of poo-pooing it. What I'm saying is, somebody in that room, and this is just what I allege, says, you know what? His image is greater than what is fact. Yep, that's what they said. And then, how it also works to go back into what we talked about with Chick-fil-A Popeyes. When somebody comes out and says, But Gandhi was racist, what's the natural reflex?

55:23 Are you crazy? You know, what do you mean? What do you think? It goes both ways. You're right. Yeah, it's a benefit for everybody. Yeah, yeah, you know, and then it makes you bigger. And for the people not in the know, they're like, No, Gandhi, MLK, you know what I'm saying? That's the association. How could he be racist? You know, Gandhi and Melson Mandela. So, how could he be racist? And what it does is what we always talked about before is the ad the politic, they need a good fight. That's what we were talking about before with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. They need to race. It's beef.

56:02 It's beef. They need a beef. Beef sales. Nobody wants to see a lopsided contest. It's not good. You cut the football game off at halftime if it's a blowout. Exactly right. Yeah. This is terrible. But they create these beefs. Oh, and let me just say, a classic beef is the so-called poll. This is the classic mainstream trick of the beef. Oh, look how close they are. Remember the conversation we had about Kamala Harrison? I told you, it got me because the post-debate poll said she's climbing in the polls.

56:47 She got a jump. She got a bump. A bump. That was what that was. That was the turn. I'm like, what? Like, hold on. She's climbing. I mean, I got nervous. And notice they're not talking about the polls now because she's under 10%. That's right. It's bad. It's bad for business. That's we see just for the sports fans out there. That's why they had to get rid of the Golden State Warriors. That's why they really hate dynasties and sports. They need what is called parody. And this new form of advertising, I believe, creates parody, not only in the political sector, but also the public sector.

57:30 Because what the social media companies will do is back the underdog. It's good to back the underdog. I'm sure this is just what I think. I have no proof of it. I'm sure Twitter probably gave Popeyes a better rate than they would have Chick-fil-A because guess what? Now Chick-fil-A has to step their advertising up. Yep. Before Chick-fil-A was the big boss applesauce of the industry. And like, we don't have to advertise. We only open six days a week. What are you talking about? But when you create the competitor, then you're in. You're in the game. You have to now Chick-fil-A has to up their buys. You know, we used to do a version of this.

58:11 I worked at many radio stations, but the most famous one was Z100 in New York. And they came in. They weren't even in New York. They were in New Jersey. At the top of the hour, they would say, broadcasting live across New York. New Jersey. That's it really softly. But they went from worst to first. And it was, in a way, a social media context where they were like, we're the underdog. We're kicking those asses over there. Those guys in the fancy towers. And then we had bumper stickers and honk your horn for Z100. And, you know, and you activated, there's a word we like to use. You activated your listeners to go and promote your station.

58:53 And Z100 has been, well, they're now no longer number one just for changing marketplaces, but they were number one for decades. And we've seen this in the faux conspiracy. conspiracy community. They use the elite as the competition to generate the listener base. This doesn't really give you an answer to who they are, but this is how it works. So just another example of how Obama, and the reason why I'm using Obama is because he understands this example. It's great. He was the first social media

59:35 Brand Obama. Brand Obama. Yeah. First social media president. And this is him on Caesar Chavez. And so today we celebrate Caesar Chavez. Caesar would be the first to say that this is not a monument to one man. The movement he helped to lead was sustained by a generation of organizers who stood up and spoke out and urged others to do the same, including the great Dolores Huerta, who is here today.

1:00:20 It drew strength from Americans of every race and every background who marched and boycotted together on behalf of La Causa. And it was always inspired by the farm workers themselves, some of whom are with us. This place belongs to you too. But the truth is, we would not be here if it weren't for Caesar. You know, I really miss him. I used to love cutting up his sound bites and stuff. It was great order. Fantastic. Great, great pitch man. Yes. Yes. Great pitch man. So, Caesar Chavez, do you have any background or anything?

1:01:03 What is he used to push? What was he? What is the workers the front man for? For the workers, for organized labor to bust up evil bosses. And what is the modern day use for Caesar Chavez? The name of the road here in Austin. He looks good on t-shirts. Now, I guess he would be considered the resistance. The resistance, and he's used as the face for illegal immigration, correct? Yes. Hmm. That's interesting. Funny how that works, Mo.

1:01:44 Funny how that works. Clip 15. We maintain that agriculture is different. It's always been different. This is why agriculture and farm workers were never organized before. As long as we have a poor country bordering California, it's going to be very difficult to win strikes as strikes are won normally by other unions with an employer. This is the case right now in one of the strikes we have with the Butte Gas and Oil Company where we've closed them down, then been unable to get strike breakers, or we've gotten very few. And then all of a sudden, yesterday morning, they brought in 220 wetbacks. These are the illegals from Mexico. I don't know much.

1:02:28 I've only been in Texas for nine years, but I guarantee you using the term wetbacks is not a good idea. But why would you use him for the face of illegal immigration? He was clearly against illegal immigration. He says if you border, as long as you border on a poor country like Mexico, it's going to be impossible for union workers to have, you know, form unions because you basically have these union busters. And he used them to call them a derogatory name and also used the term illegals. So how is it? Once again, Obama's a smart person. His team is full of smart people.

1:03:08 Those people in that crowd cheering for him had to know where Caesar Chavez is if you're about the cause. Well, this is. I think he said the cause is what he called it, right? Which is the cause. Yep. Well, it's deeply rooted in nostalgia, feeling, muscle memory, training, imagery, memes. All these things play into it. And, you know, Chavez specifically has been used throughout the years in so many different movements that I guess with poor education, people just don't think about it.

1:03:47 And they glom on to the feeling of, oh, okay, I feel good about this guy following this image. But there has to be a calculation there. I mean, when you're doing vetting. vet for candidates, when you're doing vetting for memes, there has to be a pro and a con on it, you know, or opposition to say, well, that could be used this way. Don't use that term because that could be perceived this way. I'm just interested about what in that conversation in that room, somebody had to know who Gandhi really was, who Caesar Chavez really was, and for them to continue and go with it.

1:04:33 Well, you know, yes. Again, it comes back to something we talked about initially. It's testing. And it's not that hard to do. I mean, it's done every single day. You can see it on YouTube, college campus reform, whatever it's called, where they ask people questions and they usually have a bogus question or something that's obviously dumb and they all fall for it. That's just who human beings are. We're shallow. And if over time something's been such as Image Caesar Chavez has been moved into resistance leader, you know, striving for freedom, these kinds of feelings, once you identify it's there, however it got there, then you can use it.

1:05:16 Starting that, I think, is much harder. But I don't think today you could use Image Obama for a candidate. Maybe in 40 years from now, it could be used again. I have a different take on that. And, you know, I may be wrong, but I think they knew their pitch man was so good that the people will want to believe what he was saying. Even if the facts came up, even because the facts always come up in the social media circle, somebody's always going to have a link or reply saying, hey, what about this?

1:05:56 Right. You know, and then they'll show the colours. More so today. Because when Obama came into office 2008, Twitter had really only been around for a year or two. Ashton Kutcher was the first million follower person. It was very immature at the time. I feel that, and the algos also weren't quite as sophisticated, if at all. That's a fair point. So it's become easier in some regards today and harder, I think. The way I look at it is I think Obama was the influencer in chief. Agreed. Totally agreed. That's what he's doing.

1:06:41 You're running on your brand, what you're running on, literally hope and change, not economics, jobs, any of the traditional things. And man, we were ready for it. That's another thing. We were ready for that. And then he could clean up and say, nah, Gandhi's cool, man. What are you talking about? You know, I mean, nah. Yeah. Nah, man, nah. So what I'm just trying to say is I think this came before what we're seeing now in the private sector of what we've seen with the Popeyes versus Chick-fil-A. They understand that we can have people with

1:07:26 have conversation with taboo topics and people's need to be part of the conversation to be part of following something is so strong, they'll go over that point. Well, let me stop you right there. Millions of black Americans looked over the point that Barack Obama was not an African American and took it and took it. And as you've explained previously, the second term will do stuff for us. Took it freely, agreed with it.

1:08:09 Right. And well, he was backed by his wife. And that was an image. Image, yes, exactly. Association. Exactly. The way Oprah has Stedman, you know, image. Yes, it's all about association. So it's funny that you bring them up. And we're going to get into this, the final clip. American Factories, Obamas. You guys could do whatever you want. Why did you decide to do what you're doing? One way of looking at what we've both been doing for the last 20 years, maybe most of our careers once we left law

1:08:50 was to tell stories. If you want to be in relationships with people and connect with them. them and work together with them, you have to know their story. You have to know them. Ah, this is the big $65 million Netflix deal. But did you catch? What did you take away from that clip? I don't want to ruin it. They're going to tell stories, and it sounded to me like they were going to tell stories about people whose stories they understood, which to me would mean black Americans. And that's who they're going to be targeting. One, before I tell you what you missed, it's funny that

1:09:27 his first major project on the Netflix deal that you referenced, the $65 million deal, was talking about how the Chinese industry practices is affecting a middle America, which that in itself is just really, I didn't know that, seeing as he was such a part of shipping everything over to China. Interesting, he's kind of going against the grain now. That, and then if you say who will make a movie about the Middle America being gutted, it wouldn't be Obama. No, because that would be his legacy. That would be his legacy. And you had eight years and you didn't do anything.

1:10:10 And really, Trump is the one that has been anti-China, if you want to say that. I mean, that's not really a fair assessment, what he is, but he's been pro-America and putting strong has been anti-China vocally with the same message since the late 80s. Yes, I will agree with that. So, that first was one thing that caught me on the surface: wow, you're making a movie about this. Oh, shoot me. Can I listen to the clip again before you reveal it? I want to see if I catch it this time. Okay. You guys could do whatever you want. Why did you decide to do what you're doing?

1:10:48 One way of looking at what we've both been doing for the last 20 years, maybe most of our career is once we left law, you know, was to tell stories. If you want to be in relationships with people and connect with them and work together with them, you have to know their story. You have to know them. Tell stories. Let's tell stories. We tell stories. We've been telling stories for the last 20 years. I've been telling fables and telling stories, fables on the turntables, some shit like that. Yes, of course. Fables. To connect with the people. It doesn't matter about what my policies are. It doesn't matter about who supports us.

1:11:33 It doesn't matter about anything. If you could tell a great story and connect with the person, you can sell them anything. And my wife has been a marketer and communications expert all of her career. And this is exactly her words: say, if you can tell a story, you can get people to buy in and believe. And that's what marketers do all day long: tell stories. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're giving in the truth or educating them. You're telling a story to communicate an idea, true, false, or indifferent.

1:12:11 What it does is it lowers that wall down. And just to bring this full circle of where we're at, once you lower that wall down of, you know, when people try to say you something, it's natural, they're a barrier there because it's like you're trying to separate me from my money, which your money is your power. Right. So you're trying to separate with me. Once you are able to lower that wall down, and that's the whole theory of this whole episode. They use the useful idiot to lower that barrier down. The influencer has that barrier there. The Pitch Man has that barrier there. The TV commercial has that barrier there.

1:12:56 Now they had a new tool, and that's the useful idiot online. That barrier is not naturally there. And you believe him. You know, when you buy Titan, you're saying, that was good. He's not getting paid by Popeyes. It must be really good. You know, and when you fast forward and look at Obama, what did he say? We've been telling stories. He gets up there, gives you a great, wonderful story. You lower that barrier down. Now we can sell you the pitch. It doesn't matter about who I, you know, what my policies are.

1:13:35 It doesn't matter. Hope and change. How you quantify that, you can't. Well, you know who else is a good storyteller on today's stage? Of course, of course. Kamala Harris is a fantastic storyteller. And you know who else is? Mr. Donald Trump. Oh, he's. That's why he can go for an hour and a half. As an elephant, he doesn't know how to nudge subtly, but yeah, he can. That's right. And he's got your nostalgia. Make America great again. Literally calling back to nostalgic times, although misinterpreted by many. Yeah, great storytellers. That's, yeah, that's what you need.

1:14:20 It's interesting about Trump because he truly is the first internet president. Barack Obama was incapable of the interpersonal type of communication style or dialogue even that is necessary to make social media work. Now, there were no examples. It was early. So I don't think he really, you know, there's no one who really understood how that worked at the time. And they're basing on old metrics. Trump figured, I think he's already always known this.

1:14:56 Make a lot of noise, big noise, big, big, and he knows, and he's very good. Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist, wrote a book about persuasion and how Trump was going to win, and he predicted it based on Trump's persuasion techniques, which goes right back to the beginning of this program, Edward Bernays. Yes. And for lack of a better term, Trump is the useful idiot in this situation. The reason why I say that is not in how that sounds, but he's had an opinion on everything, so he doesn't appear to be an influencer. It's natural when he says something. It's naturally received because he has an opinion on everything.

1:15:40 So he's perceived the same way as the guy that Popeyes will use to say, oh, this guy, you know, he's just another blogger. He's just a Twitter guy with a lot of followers. Right. He's not trying to say you something. I mean, he's not, that's not what been his role. He says what he says and what he feels. That would be the perception. That's the perception. That's when Barack Obama goes to tweet. Yeah. It's an agenda base. Yes, with bullet points. Right. Yeah. So just to go and show you, I mean, that's we're seeing. It's amazing how we've seen these. Is it the dog? Is it the dog wagging the tail or the tail wagging the dog?

1:16:16 Well, you made another great point. It works both ways. It benefits both sides, just like Obama benefited Gandhi retroactively. The question I ask is: Are the advertisers looking back and looking at studying Trump? Like, how was he so successful? Yeah, he doesn't come across as an influencer. Is that the conversation being had? I don't know. I don't have an answer. It's more of a question. Well, I think generally accepted is that it was the beef. It was an ongoing beef situation. And here came the under, here came Popeyes of politics. Donald Trump lumbering along, and he goes, Hey, you guys suck. Your chicken sandwich, no good.

1:17:02 It's bad. It's sad. And then it turned into a media frenzy. And it was Donald Trump 24-7 throughout the entire election cycle. And he was the Popeyes of that election. Yeah, Sleepy Joe, Pocahontas, Low Energy Jeb. I mean, he was. Well, he had the branding down too. That's all part of the persuasion game. And that's the clapback. That's the slapdown, whatever you want to call it. That was the point I'm making that he latched himself on to Jeb Bush. If Jeb Bush would have brushed him off and paid him no attention, he can't win. Right. But he made an attack so potent that you have to reply back.

1:17:47 And when you've done that, you brought him to your level. And then you don't have the leverage anymore. Yeah, so here's the challenge. Here's the challenge for a company like Twitter. And I agree, that's obviously that's where, I mean, we're going to see almost $2 billion of digital advertising for this entire election, $6.8 billion in total, of which just under $3 billion goes to television. Then there's a piece to radio and print, et cetera. But still, almost $2 billion for digital. They've got to keep that in check. They've got to keep it in track. If they're using these types of campaigns, and I cannot thank you enough for bringing this particular one to my attention.

1:18:29 Moreover, because of the sensitivity of the topic, which I'd still like to explore how that's working out, they have to control the messaging. And I envision them having a dashboard with dials that artificially creates. what Donald Trump was able to do by himself amazingly, but you dial it up a little bit, bring some pro people in, sprinkle in a little bit of Contra stuff, dial it back a bit, it's moving too far. The algorithms they use, and these are just levers. It's literally like a mixing board. They can mix that. They can mix in these levels that you're seeing in your feed. It's very powerful stuff and very, very hidden and tricky and kind of not nice.

1:19:14 But you're from the advertising world. And I would want to say this one thing: you can't create a good salesman. No matter what, you can't create a good salesman. And that's the one thing that you can't manufacture. So they are, in fact, it's funny you say that. Every company I have run or owned, the sales team, not the same, but were often like Donald Trump.

1:19:53 It's a kind of person. And they can, these, the great salespeople can sell almost anything. It's because they're authentic. Not authentic in the positive sense of the word, but without any positive or negative. They're just authentic. And that goes just to close this out. Going back to the show Mad Men, Donald Draper was that kind of person. He would be all out all night, whoring, drinking, asleep in his office. And then they go wake him up, you know what I'm saying? He'll shave, walk into the room, give you a pitchy mint speech.

1:20:34 Pitch. Bam. So, yeah. You're right. Yeah, he was the best. Authentic in his own way. Absolutely. So is the American Factory? Is that the name of the production company the Obamas have? No, that's the name of their first film. Oh, okay. And I don't know anything about it. Is it out yet? Yes, it's out. And it's just looking at China's influence on. I can't believe I haven't seen it. So why have I not heard of this? Why am I not watching it? What's going on with their marketing? I don't know. That's a good question. One thing is the people that want to talk about this are on the wrong side of the argument.

1:21:20 I wonder why. I have a theory why, but I think this is for the Joe Biden crowd. Right. So the message is not getting to me. Right. I think this is more for the Joe Biden crowd. You know what I'm saying? For those people that may be pro-Trump, but willing to swing to Joe Biden to show, and it cleans up Joe's China mess. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can't believe that Obama is doing that. I mean, yeah, well, I guess he wants to preserve his legacy through Joe, but. Oh, geez. Well, they probably said, hey, man, you got to give us this one.

1:22:05 They're hurting right now. I mean, you saw, I mean, you brought it up. I mean, they can't let Clippity Clock run again, man. She's going to swoop in before you know it. She'll be all over us. Mo, this was fantastic. It reminded me of a lot of things that I've studied in the past that I have applied as well. It was great to bring this back. And man, you blew my mind about the chicken conversation. And what I'd like to know is: do you think that this is now going to become more acceptable to discuss thanks to this? What chicken you like? No, I don't. It was never about that. No, I know, but is it

1:22:51 what I think is this? This is what I think. One, I think for certain people, this conversation will never be a comfortable conversation with any stereotype. I think that's the same thing you see it with, not to list out certain which you see with certain groups. We don't like to talk about our power influence. We don't like to talk about our, you know, our intelligence in certain subjects. You know, it's very uncomfortable. So I don't think it will ever be comfortable. I think this was a masterpiece of a nudge because it broke that threshold. That's what I wanted to point out: the natural reflex to say, I don't want to talk about this, but it's so.

1:23:41 Such a powerful wave that you get sucked up in it. I think when Twitter or whoever goes back and they can show the people they sell advertisements to, like, look, we were able to break this taboo threshold. This ain't what we could do for your company. I think that was the play, the play in place. I agree. And I'm very curious now to see if they're going to try and replicate this with other taboo topics. I can already think of a couple, which I'll withhold, but and some may already be brewing, which I haven't seen yet. And maybe other people figure this out and start doing it with their own

1:24:24 properties. Because I think that's where Edward Bernays was able to say, like, bro, I got women smoking cigarettes. And that's exactly how he said it, too. Just imagine that. Well, this has been fantastic, Mo. I always learn so much chatting with you. I love it. It's fantastic. I'm glad you enjoyed, and I hope the listeners did too. Yes. And beware of the nudge. That's all I can say. Beware of the nudge, indeed. A quick mention that we are now running this under the value for value system. That means you just listened for about an hour and 25 minutes. Did you get any value out of it?

1:25:07 If you did, translate that into money. You could have spent an hour and a half watching a Netflix movie for $5, $4.99. Consider donating that to the show so that Mo and I can continue to produce. It does take effort. We're putting value in. We like to get value back. And we'll be talking more about that in future episodes. You can donate to the show at mofacts.com, M-O-E-F-A-C-T-Z.com through PayPal or Cash App. All right, Mo. Thank you again. As always, it's a pleasure.

1:25:45 And as I always say, pay attention to everything and the truth will reveal itself. And make sure you subscribe to this podcast and your podcast app. And we always tweet out new episodes. So please let everybody know. Retweet that and get the message out. We'll talk to you next week. Thanks again, Moe. Stuck to you soon, man. All right. See you later. All right. Bye-bye. You playing a game. It's so plain.

1:26:37 You want me to win. I'm willing to play whatever you say. If love is the end.